Should Pennsylvania emulate Arizona on immigration?

TOWN SQUARE

May 07, 2010|Paul Carpenter

In November 2008, state Rep. Daryl Metcalfe, R-Butler, called a group of American military veterans ''traitors'' because they endorsed a national effort to deal with global warming by reducing industrial and other pollution.

Curbing oil industry profits is treasonably unconstitutional, he felt, so ''any veteran lending their (sic) name to promote the leftist propaganda of global warming and climate change ... is a traitor.''

A few months earlier, Metcalfe led a crusade to defeat a proposed House resolution to recognize a Muslim group's convention in Harrisburg designed to improve harmony between religions, in keeping with William Penn's belief in tolerance.

Such a recognition must not be given, Metcalfe thundered in Harrisburg, because ''Muslims do not recognize Jesus Christ as God. I do. William Penn did.''

A year before that, Metcalfe was able to attract a number of luminaries to a press conference to ballyhoo an ''Invasion PA'' report he wrote on illegal immigration.

The report listed 120 cases about Pennsylvanians ''whose lives have been unnecessarily lost or irreparably damaged due to the federal government's outright refusal to honor the constitutional obligation of securing America's borders against foreign invaders.'' The luminaries included Northampton County District Attorney John Morganelli, then seeking support to run for state attorney general.

After the press conference, Morganelli read Metcalfe's report and called it ''deficient'' -- even though he has been one of the state's toughest proponents for cracking down on illegal immigrants.

''The report was, in my view, poorly constructed,'' the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review quoted Morganelli as saying. ''It was a compilation of opinions and inferences drawn from arrests that really did not support the conclusion that an 'invasion' is occurring in Pennsylvania.'' He said Metcalfe did not distinguish between arrests and convictions, '' and everyone arrested is presumed innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.''

Innocent until proven guilty? That's not the way it works in Arizona, where a law enacted last month lets local law enforcement yahoos presume people to be illegal immigrants on the basis of reasonable suspicion, such as speaking Spanish or having dark complexions.

Naturally, Metcalfe is eager for Pennsylvania to have a law like that. Moreover, populist hysteria almost always boosts political hopes, no matter how bogus or bigoted (as illustrated by the mayor of Hazleton), and Metcalfe has high hopes of winning the Republican nomination to run for lieutenant governor.

Therefore, this week he introduced ''Arizona-modeled legislation'' to let local police agencies in Pennsylvania crack down on ''the clear and present dangers of illegal alien invaders.''

Metcalf boasted that they'll get busted for ''failing to register as an alien or failing to possess proper proof of such registration when stopped for another primary offense such as a traffic violation.'' Hey, all those sinister immigrants will have to prove they are not in violation.

I read his bill and it requires them to carry papers so local officials can check them out at any time, reminiscent of those ''let me see your papers'' movies about totalitarian regimes. House Bill 2479 also stipulates that cops ''shall be indemnified'' against being held accountable if they target innocent people.

A national organization, Reform Immigration for America, blasted Metcalfe's bill as ''the latest in a string of misguided heat-of-the-moment proposals'' aimed at ''racial profiling.''

Locally, Erika Sutherland, a Muhlenberg College professor who runs an immigration support group, told me she finds the bill ''frightening. ... I'm not too concerned about it actually passing [but] I'm concerned about the climate it generates. Having a state enact its own immigration laws is a terrifying concept. Immigration laws are federal.''

That brings us back to Morganelli, who told me he supports, in principle, the kind of legislation Metcalfe pushed in 2008. It would have punished employers who hire undocumented workers.

Morganelli said ''local police [already] have the right to detain people for immigration matters [but] you can't just stop people for no reason. ... Profiling is not proper.'' He said if local police find evidence that people are illegal immigrants, they can be turned over to the feds, as he and others do regularly.

So immigration, I asked, should be a federal, not local, pursuit.

''It should be, yes,'' Morganelli said.

The U.S. Constitution, by the way, gives Congress the power ''to establish a uniform rule of naturalization,'' indicating that immigration is strictly a federal, not state, bailiwick. I wonder if Metcalfe considers it treasonably unconstitutional to violate that principle.